Even when executions are not carried out, the death penalty costs US states hundreds of millions of dollars a year, depleting budgets in the midst of economic crisis, a study released yesterday found.
“It is doubtful in today’s economic climate that any legislature would introduce the death penalty if faced with the reality that each execution would cost taxpayers 25 million dollars, or that the state might spend more than 100 million dollars over several years and produce few or no executions,” argued Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) and the report’s author.
New Mexico Becomes the 15th State to Eliminate the Death Penalty Other States Consider Taking Similar Action to Ease Budget Concerns by Death Penalty Focus March 18, 2009
On March 18, 2009, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed H.B. 285, which is a bi-partisan bill that replaces the death penalty with permanent imprisonment. New Mexico is the fifteenth state to abandon capital punishment and the second state to do so legislatively in the last two years. New Jersey's legislature passed a similar bill in December 2007. At least ten other states have considered similar measures this year citing the significant savings that could result from ending the death penalty: Montana, Nebraska, Maryland, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Kansas are among them. Earlier this year, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley called on his state's legislature to end the death penalty citing both financial and ethical concerns.
